The Murrieta protesters against Border Patrol detention of “illegal aliens” in “their community” are willfully ignorant of why children and mothers with babies would leave their homes on a perilous journey infested with drug gangs and human traffickers, to a country they know does not want them and likely will deport them. Ironically, the protesters seem oblivious to America’s origin by illegal immigrants to the so-called new world. Patriots would have done well to spend their Fourth of July weekend researching our own history.

The U.S. has a sordid history of fomenting military takeovers of democratically elected governments in almost every nation south of our border. Well-documented death squad murders amount to 35,000 El Salvadorans and 42,000 Guatemalans killed. The Honduran military’s murder tally began yet another cycle of murder after the most recent U.S. supported coup in 2009.

People in fear for their lives run from the danger, even when their fate is unknown. Better to flee to an unknown fate in the U.S. than to await the well-known fate: kidnap, rape and murder in their home.

Gil Villagrán, MSW

School of Social Work San Jose State University

Both parties fail to enforce immigration

Our lawmakers, including the president, are saying that the immigration system is broken. Both Republicans and Democrats have ignored and failed to enforce the existing laws. Both parties have failed to secure the border. People who suggested a border fence were mocked by leaders in both parties. Now we have children streaming across the border, and we act surprised.

We don’t need new laws and expensive programs. We need to enforce the laws that are on the books now. We do need to take care of the children who are here now but stop the flow.

Keith De Filippis

San Jose

If women want to halt pregnancy, they will

We all know that illegal abortions were performed before they became legal. Some may say that there were fewer of them, but who’s to say, there were no statistics kept for illegal abortions. Whether or not you believe Plan B is an abortion or not is irrelevant. Why? If the woman is denied Plan B, she’ll still find a way to terminate her pregnancy. It’ll probably be at a later time in her pregnancy. I guess anti-abortion protesters would prefer holding up signs showing a fetus rather than a fertilized egg that hasn’t attached to the womb. Plan B will not stop the development of a fetus once the fertilized egg implants in the uterus.

Thomas Sutton

San Jose

Hypocrite Cheney was all wrong about Iraq

Trudy’ Rubin’s views on former Vice President Dick Cheney (Opinion, July 2) are right on point. Cheney’s criticism of President Obama’s handling of the Iraq crisis is just another example of his unmitigated arrogance and hypocrisy. Wasn’t he a dominate member of the previous administration that created this crisis in the first place? Under the direction of the George W. Bush administration the United States invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq under false pretenses, deposed a government, destroyed an infrastructure, destroyed an economy, and created a civil war environment causing the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Wasn’t he the one who said the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites would come together as a democracy? Cheney’s polemic is outrageous. Did he ever study the history and understand the culture of the Middle East? If he or anyone else sincerely believe that a 1,400 year old sectarian ethnic dispute can be solved by a coalition democracy, they are living in a fantasy world.

Joseph Rizzuto

Los Gatos

Call for Israeli restraint laudable despite pain

Although reader Waheed Siddiqee’s call for restraint in Israel is a laudable, reasonable plea (Letters, July 3), it must be overwhelmingly painful for Israelis to minimize natural horror and immediate reaction to outright barbarism. Until Benjamin Netanyahu finds the animals who kidnapped and killed unarmed, seminary school students who were on their way home from school, the emotions will continue to run high. It is not only the pain of the horrific loss. It is also the weariness of being surrounded by countries and people who have publicly and repeatedly declared their to-the-death intentions of destroying the only democracy in the area. From the comfort of my own Silicon Valley home, it is hard to imagine the depth of the pain. Of course, the display of savageness would generate an Israeli promise that the perpetrators will pay. To complete the brutish picture of inconceivable cruelty to young innocents, add the destabilizing reality of rocket fire into Israel from Hamas in Gaza. Is this area absolutely doomed to relentless violence?

In closed door talks, Sen. Dianne Feinstein agreed to a major new water policy for California that sells out the Delta and guts Endangered Species Act protections. Sen. Barbara Boxer is fighting the good fight to remove the rider from her comprehensive water infrastructure bill, but it may take a presidential veto.